Ginzel first attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago briefly in 1942 before leaving to serve in the Coast Guard during the Second World War. Returning to the school in 1946, Ginzel took classes with Max Kahn, studying lithography and creating his first prints. After a fire destroyed his print studio in the mid-1950s, the artist used an innovative technique—he called it “paper intaglio,” but today it is commonly known as collograph—to produce a series of large prints similar to his own abstract paintings. He attached layers of automatic lacquer, which he used in his paintings, to a cardboard plate on which he gouged, scraped, and applied abrasive particles to approximate aquatint; in this process the cardboard plate functions similarly to copper intaglio plates.